Film Freak Centraltag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-999282957331064452014-03-24T23:01:00-05:00TypePadThe John Frankenheimer Collection - DVD|French Connection II (1975) + The Manchurian Candidate (1962) - Blu-ray Discstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a73d972197970d2014-03-24T23:01:00-05:002014-03-22T20:03:45-05:00THE YOUNG SAVAGES (1961) **/**** Image B Sound C starring Burt Lancaster, Dina Merrill, Edward Andrews, Vivian Nathan screenplay by Edward Anhalt and J.P. Miller, based on the novel A Matter of Conviction by Evan Hunter directed by John Frankenheimer THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) ****/**** DVD - Image A Sound A Extras B+ BD - Image A Sound C+ Extras B+ starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon directed by John Frankenheimer THE TRAIN (1964) ****/**** Image C- Sound C starring Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Michel Simon, Jeanne Moreau screenplay by Franklin Coen and Frank Davis, based on the novel Le front de l'art by Rose Valland directed by John Frankenheimer FRENCH CONNECTION II (1975) **½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B+ starring Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Bernard Fresson, Philippe Léotard screenplay by Alexander Jacobs and Robert Dillon & Laurie Dillon directed by John Frankenheimer RONIN (1998) **½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B starring Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgård screenplay by J.D. Zeik and Richard Weisz directed by John Frankenheimer by Walter Chaw There weren't many American directors who enjoyed a hotter...Bill ChambersSeconds (1966) [The Criterion Collection] - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c019affb70f8f970c2013-10-01T19:50:36-05:002013-10-02T09:52:25-05:00click any image to enlarge ****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+ starring Rock Hudson, John Randolph, Salome Jens, Frances Reid screenplay by Lewis John Carlino, based on the novel by David Ely directed by John Frankenheimer by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. For the longest time I wanted to write a book about John Frankenheimer, the crux of which would be a closer look at the relationship, if there was one, between the declining quality of his work and the assassination of his buddy Bobby Kennedy. It would be a cultural study, see, this way to tie the death of the Sixties with a director who for me definitively speaks to the rises and valleys of that decade, and who paved the way for the despairing paranoia flicks of the 1970s. In the end, I was defeated by the prospect of dealing with Frankenheimer's later films--not because they were all as bad as Prophecy (or that any of the others are near as bad as Prophecy, or that anything could be), but because many of them are really, really good in really, really difficult ways to quantify. Closer to the truth of his output post-RFK assassination is not...Bill ChambersEchoestag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c019104af7d12970c2013-08-10T10:49:18-05:002013-08-10T10:57:12-05:00Opening shot of Seconds (1966, d. John Frankenheimer): Opening shot of The Fly (1986, d. David Cronenberg):Bill ChambersThe Manchurian Candidate (1962) [Special Edition] + Deathdream (1972) - DVDs + Uncle Sam (1997) - DVD|Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01901dee027b970b2013-06-27T23:01:00-05:002013-06-27T11:18:16-05:00THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE ****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+ starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon directed by John Frankenheimer Dead of Night ***½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A- starring John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Richard Backus, Henderson Forsythe screenplay by Alan Ormsby directed by Bob Clark UNCLE SAM **½/**** DVD - Image B+ Sound B Extras A- BD - Image B Sound A Extras A- starring Isaac Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Timothy Bottoms, Robert Forster screenplay by Larry Cohen directed by William Lustig THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As the zeitgeist is one of those things we tend to discuss in the past tense, you have to wonder whether it's a vacuum or a barometer. In other words, the point at which culturemongers finally lunge at a craze is usually once it's begun shrieking its death rattle, and yet a post-mortem of said craze invariably divulges a complex tapestry of art and politics, the ascription of happenstance to which seems preposterous. Our own Walter Chaw brilliantly observes in recent omnibus reviews pairing Love Me If You Dare with Valentin and Dodgeball...Bill ChambersBlack Sunday (1977) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c0176175404b4970c2012-08-19T20:41:16-05:002012-08-19T20:41:16-05:00***/**** Image A Sound B starring Robert Shaw, Bruce Dern, Marthe Keller, Fritz Weaver screenplay by Ernest Lehman, Kenneth Ross and Ivan Moffat directed by John Frankenheimer by Walter Chaw Before Thomas Harris created a genius shrink-turned-serial murderer, he wrote the everything-old-is-new-again terrorist saga Black Sunday, managing to incorporate the Super Bowl into its tale of good intelligence saving the day. How novel. What's constant between this and Harris's Hannibal Lecter trilogy is his interest in broken heroes: the inversion of the man of action archetype that germinated in the Fifties Western tradition and flowered in the voodoo ego-nomics of the Reagan-mad Eighties, locating Black Sunday firmly in the deep well of Seventies cinema--filthy with ineffectual champions and astringent endings. But where Harris's novel understood its place in the bittersweet, paranoid zeitgeist, Black Sunday, with its all-star cast (Robert Shaw two years after Jaws, Bruce Dern at his peak, Marthe Keller a year removed from Marathon Man), megalomaniacal producer Robert Evans, and blockbuster aspirations, proves to be another Star Wars-style harbinger of the impending end of what was possibly the most amazing period in film in history. RUNNING TIME 143 minutes MPAA R ASPECT RATIO(S) 2.35:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD...Bill ChambersThe Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) [Unrated Director's Cut] - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017c315c038f970b2012-08-19T19:35:13-05:002012-08-19T19:21:43-05:00**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras F starring Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk screenplay by Richard Stanley and Ron Hutchinson directed by John Frankenheimer click any image to enlarge by Walter Chaw This is a tough one. As an avowed if guarded fan of director John Frankenheimer, his involvement with The Island of Dr. Moreau is something like a gobsmacker. Sure, he'd ventured into genre before with the ridiculous Prophecy, while, arguably, his two best films--The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds, his masterpiece--are genre pieces, too. But I think at the time, bringing in Frankenheimer three days into a troubled shoot to replace that assclown Richard Stanley was more an act of expediency than of ingenuity. If New Line thought they were getting a closer, they were right; if they thought they were getting someone who could corral the downward-spiralling Val Kilmer, they were less right ("Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer," Frankenheimer famously said). What they probably weren't expecting was that Frankenheimer would turn in something that, though critically-savaged at the time, had some legs. No, The Island of Dr. Moreau isn't a whole, falling apart as it does in the last half-hour or so, but it...Bill ChambersProphecy (1979) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c0163059eb91a970d2012-05-17T19:50:07-05:002012-05-17T19:50:07-05:00½*/**** Image B Sound C- starring Talia Shire, Robert Foxworth, Armand Assante, Richard Dysart screenplay by David Seltzer directed by John Frankenheimer by Walter Chaw There is a moment in the middle of John Frankenheimer's relentlessly campy (and prophecy-free) Prophecy when noble savage John Hawks (essayed by Irish-Italian Armand Assante), eluding the fuzz, runs through a forest clearing, into a cabin, and out a closed window. Why Hawks didn't just take off into the woods is a mystery almost as great as what happened to Frankenheimer after the 1960s. I also liked a scene that finds professional weepy milquetoast Talia Shire with a mutant bear cub chewing on her throat. Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada RUNNING TIME 102 minutes MPAA PG ASPECT RATIO(S) 2.35:1, 16x9-enhanced LANGUAGES English Dolby Surround SUBTITLES English CC Yes REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-9 STUDIO Paramount Prophecy is a self-important, self-conscious environmental horror film scripted by David Seltzer (recently guilty of Dragonfly, he continues to coast on the surprise success of his The Omen) that makes time to somehow preach a pro-life platform as well. "Preach" being the operative word. Prophecy stars professional blue-veiner Robert Foxworth as do-gooder inner-city doctor Robert Verne who...Bill ChambersVroom! Vroom!: Grand Prix (1966); Le Mans (1971); Fast Company (1979) - Blu-ray Discstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c0168eb84af55970c2012-05-15T11:35:19-05:002012-08-13T21:06:23-05:00GRAND PRIX ***/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B- starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Yves Montand, Toshiro Mifune screenplay by Robert Alan Arthur directed by John Frankenheimer LE MANS ****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras D starring Steve McQueen, Siegfried Rauch, Elga Andersen, Ronald Leigh-Hunt screenplay by Harry Kleiner directed by Lee H. Katzin FAST COMPANY **/**** Image A- Sound C+ Extras A+ starring William Smith, Claudia Jennings, John Saxon, Don Francks screenplay by Phil Savath, Courtney Smith and David Cronenberg directed by David Cronenberg LE MANS by Walter Chaw Of the major films produced during John Frankenheimer's fulsome period (that stretch between The Young Savages and Seconds that saw him as a giant among giants, tearing off masterpieces major (The Train, The Manchurian Candidate) and minor (The Birdman of Alcatraz, Seven Days in May)), Grand Prix has always stuck out for me as a swing-and-a-miss. There's no disputing either its technical innovation, which saw cameras mounted to Formula One cars for the first time, or Frankenheimer's fire, which seemed to single-handedly will the production to the finish line despite prickly subjects, competition from a Steve McQueen Formula One project in simultaneous development, and insurance companies pulling out when...Bill Chambers